Yes, there are studies.

And people are very, very worried.

One from MIT showed people using ChatGPT to write essays were less engaged. They scored lower on cognitive tests.

(Meaning? They copy-pasted bland garbage and called it a day.)

You know what that proves? Not that AI is dangerous. Just that people were lazy.

If you give a lazy person a power tool, they’ll use it to avoid thinking. If you give a curious person the same tool, they’ll use it to build a cathedral.

Look…

They said calculators would make us stupid. They said spellcheck would ruin writing. They said GPS would fry our internal compass. They said the internet would melt our attention spans.

They weren’t wrong. Not exactly. But they missed the point.

I’ll explain.

First, Let’s Be Fair…

Calculators did make us worse at mental math. (But the catch: It depends on when and how calculators are introduced.)

Try asking a teenager what 12 × 8 is without pulling out their phone. They’ll look at you like you just asked them to forge iron.

But here’s what really happened: We traded arithmetic for analytics.

Fewer people can divide 473 by hand…

But far more people can model a business in Excel, code a simulation, or run statistical regressions.

What they don’t tell you: higher-level math performance improved—students could focus more on problem-solving, logic, and modeling once they weren’t bogged down with long division

That’s not brain rot. That’s resource allocation.

Spellcheck? Absolutely killed spelling bees. Autocorrect made entire generations forget how to spell “definately.”

But it also made people write a lot more. Texts. Posts. DMs. Emails. We went from “most people barely write” to “everyone writes, constantly.”

Grandpa wrote five letters a year. Your barista wrote a blog post on mushroom coffee before breakfast.

GPS?

Yes, GPS really did shrink people’s sense of direction. There are even studies pointing to reduced hippocampus activation in heavy users. But GPS didn’t make us helpless.

It made everywhere accessible. I’ve landed in cities where I don’t know the language, the alphabet, or the road signs…

And I still found tacos, cash, and the Airbnb.

So yes: these tools took something. But they gave us a lot more. The mistake wasn’t seeing the cost. The mistake was assuming the cost outweighed the gain.

Now… here comes the newest fear.

The Fear Du Jour: AI Will Rot Our Brains

Same panic. Fancier packaging.

The argument goes like this: “ChatGPT is making people dumber. They don’t think for themselves anymore. They don’t write their own essays. They can’t remember what they typed. Their creativity is gone. Their work is soulless. Their brain is mush.”

We’ve heard this refrain before.

But here’s the truth: AI doesn’t kill your creativity. It kills the excuse for not being creative.

You’ve got an infinite idea machine, an empty page assassin, a co-writer who doesn’t sleep, and a researcher with a 3-second response time.

ChatGPT doesn’t erase your brain. It erases the blank page.

What you do after that? That’s still up to you.

It’s the difference between a trampoline and a wheelchair.

One is a tool. The other is a crutch. AI can be a trampoline. It can get you off the ground. But you still have to jump.

If you’re using ChatGPT to brainstorm ideas or debug your code…

You’re using it like a trampoline.

If you’re using it to avoid effort entirely? That’s a wheelchair. And you’re rolling straight into mediocrity.

The Real Brain Rot? It’s Not AI.

What’s the real brain rot? Fear. Fear of looking dumb. Fear of new tools. Fear of being replaced.

Every new tool takes something away. But it typically gives back more. That’s why we use it.

AI isn’t going to rot your brain. But fear will.

So the next time someone tells you “AI is making people dumb,”

 just smile and say:

“If you’re dumber with better tools… maybe the tool isn’t the problem.”